Legal

Terms of Use

Last updated: April 2026 · Effective immediately
Plain English first
Use Background Cafe to work, study, relax, and enjoy good sounds.
🎵 Music is streamed from Spotify and YouTube — respect their terms too.
🚫 Don't scrape, copy, or redistribute the site or its sounds without permission.
🤝 We built this in good faith. Use it in good faith.
01

Acceptance

By using Background Cafe ("the Service"), you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the Service. That's it — we don't need you to click a checkbox or create an account.

These terms apply to all visitors and users of backgroundcafe.com and any associated pages.

02

What you can do

Encouraged
  • Use it for personal work, study, or relaxation sessions
  • Share the URL with friends and colleagues
  • Use it in cafés, libraries, home offices
  • Switch between playlists freely
  • Mix ambient sounds to your taste
  • Use the Pomodoro timer for your own workflows
Not permitted
  • Reproducing or redistributing the site's code or design
  • Using automated bots or scrapers on the Service
  • Attempting to circumvent rate limits or abuse sound servers
  • Reselling access or claiming ownership of the Service
  • Misrepresenting Background Cafe as your own product
03

Intellectual property

The Background Cafe name, design, illustrations, sound design, and code are owned by their respective creators and protected by applicable intellectual property law.

The music playlists link to content hosted by Spotify and YouTube. We do not claim ownership of any musical works. Rights belong to the respective artists, labels, and rights holders. If you are a rights holder with a concern, contact us at hello@backgroundcafe.com.

The ambient sound files (barista, rain, fireplace, etc.) are licensed for use within the Service. They may not be downloaded, repackaged, or redistributed.

04

Third-party services

Background Cafe embeds players from Spotify and YouTube. By using these embedded players, you are also subject to their respective terms of service:

Spotify: spotify.com/legal
YouTube: youtube.com/t/terms

A Spotify Premium subscription may be required for full-length playback without interruptions. Background Cafe has no control over Spotify's or YouTube's service availability, content availability, or pricing.

05

Disclaimer of warranties

Background Cafe is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that ambient sound files will always be available.

We are a small independent project. We do our best, but we can't make promises about uptime or availability.

06

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Background Cafe and its creators shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of (or inability to use) the Service.

In plain terms: if you miss a deadline because the rain sounds went quiet, that's on the rain.

07

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. When we do, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Continued use of the Service after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

We'll always try to write them in plain language. Legal jargon is not our vibe.

08

Governing law

These terms are governed by applicable law. We hope it never comes to that. If you have a concern, please just email us first at hello@backgroundcafe.com.